Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Calling all lawyers.

How many laws are potentially being broken here? (emphasis in original)

Did [CC] get paid, and if so how much? Will he declare the money he received in his tax returns? How much did the sidekicks get? Will they declare those earnings and maybe other similar ones in their tax returns ? Or did he prostitute himself and his sidekicks for free?Note to self: Get in touch with the Revenue Canada guys I used to know during the short term contract a couple of years ago. Always good to keep in touch with influential friends.

I'm just curious. Maybe Stephen Taylor knows. I'll bet that, as co-founder of the Blogging Tories, he needs to have a lawyer on call pretty much 24/7.

27 comments:

mmm hmmm. Folks who do short term contract work almost inevitably establish influential contacts who are willing to violate their oath of employment and all other federal confidentiality positions to embarass a blogger somewhere.

This is like listening to a shrieking, red faced six-year old brat screaming "My daddy's a COP!! He's gonna ARREST you!!!"

You have to wonder what criteria are being used to select blogs for The Blogging Tories. I remember a while back one sensible blogger being kicked off the blog roll because he/she hadn't been writing enough about Conservative politics.

The folks at CRA who do the contract front end work are monitored and recorded for critique and being used as case studies for others. They have very clear instruction as to what is legal and what is not. I do have a friend that did that kind of work before deciding that a return to being a line prep lead in a big restaurant was less pressure, but even so, his training was such he easily took down a lawyer trying to illegally demand privacy information when looking into renting property from the authoritarian. Anyone in CRA co-operating as this blogger preens, is begging for the big slam.

Also, pardon my confusion, but how much 'digging' does this Sherlock need to do when CC was 'outed' already? Isn't that a bit like nuking a tv dinner and expecting praise for preparing a feast? It has the sound of 'yeahyeah Spike, let me at'm, let me at'm, I'll tear'm up, yipyipyip' Lotta hat 'n no cattle there.

As is usual for your antagonists, Dodo doesn't look to be terribly bright (earlier in her blog we learn that the TTC should have competetition, or at least rearrange their schedules around her club-hopping friends), but at least she's more entertaining than Ross or Evans.

To be unnecessarily fair, it honestly doesn't look to me like she's pretending to ask Revenue Canada for your personal information. It seems much more likely that she's pretending to suggest that they should audit you for undeclared income. IANAL, but I don't think that alone is illegal.

Besides, the former interpretation implies that she's interested in doing even more research, and I think she's exhausted herself already.

[A featureless cubicle in Ottawa. A man sits at a desk, hard at work.]

*ring*

Canadian Revenue Agency, John Smith speakng.

Okay...

Mary S...

Oh, yeah! I remember. You did that short-term thing a couple of years ago. Nice to hear from you.

Uh huh.

Um, okay, but --

Wait, this guy did what?

And you figure he's making how much for this?

Well, you know, Mary --

Well, the thing is --

[Hand over mouthpiece] (Guys, shut up, I'll tell you in a sec.)

Okay, Mary. No problem. We'll just put him on our list of people to audit this year and that's that.

Uh huh. Don't worry about it.

Yeah.

No, listen, call back any time, Mary. Always great to hear from you.

[Hangs up]

You guys are never going to believe this. Remember that idiot Mary who couldn't even spell? The one whose contract "ended early"? She wanted -- no, I know -- I can't even breathe, I'm laughing so -- okay, okay. So she wanted us to audit a guy who's making fun of her on his blog.

I have a friend at CRA; we're both members of a small, insignificant but federally-incorporated club. He wouldn't even look up our CRA number at my request (I'm Treasurer, but my predecessor never bothered to write it down--luckily we don't really need it).